Like sports, arts deserves our support

Why are sports facilities that cost astronomical amounts rarely questioned while arts projects requiring some public funding are undoable because of high costs? ("Visit reinforces worries on renovating of theater," Sept. 28).

My anger and frustration against these legislators are undescribable. Does anyone other than sports fans have a claim on public funds? While rejecting the Hippodrome project seems possible, plans continue to study replacement of the Baltimore Arena. How can one project possibly be rejected out of hand and the other continued?

Another patently stupid observation is that the area is too derelict for people to attend the theater. Has State Del. Martha S. Klima been in this neighborhood on a game day for the Orioles or Ravens?

The garage, which could easily be attached to the arts center, is a major parking facility for attendees at these events. The neighborhood presents no problem for sports fans.

Our legislators should know that people other than sports fans pay taxes and are entitled to some consideration to pursue their interests with government support.

Gary C. Harn

Baltimore

One-year moratorium to save blue crabs

There is one way to guarantee that we will again have the abundant blue crab harvest that the Chesapeake used to give us: No crabbing for one year, starting January 1999, including summer months.

People caught crabbing would be fined far more than the value of the catch. Have the state pay people whose regular income is through crabbing, just like the farmers who have been paid in the past not to grow certain produce.

These crabbers would have to take another type of occupation to supplement their income for one year.

But what great crabs we Marylanders would enjoy in year 2000.

Doris Slater

Timonium

Compassion is needed to heal Clinton, nation

Bill Clinton's sins are clearly those of weakness, not of malice.

I hope the Congress will be spiritually minded and seek a "win-win" scenario for the president and for the good of the country. I hope it will offer Mr. Clinton an atmosphere in which the truth can be told, an atmosphere of sincere compassion instead of harsh partisanship.

Accusation and the threat of condemnation put pressure on the accused so that they cannot do their soul work or come to know the real truth about themselves.

My hope is that Mr. Clinton will be able to look at what is apparently his his mortal flaw -- sexual addiction -- and come to the truth about himself, thereby moving out of the state of denial he seems to be in. Why? Because that same mortal flaw afflicts not a few of us.

The primary agenda for the Congress in regard to Mr. Clinton should be the healing of the whole country, a noble task that should transcend partisan lines.

Congress and the president have the opportunity to aspire to genuine greatness here so that we can cease wallowing in incivility and repair the harm done to the presidency.

If Mr. Clinton cannot receive mercy and forgiveness, is there mercy and forgiveness for any of us? Will this be a world of incivility on the rampage or a compassionate, loving and forgiving world? It's our choice.

The Rev. Bob Traupman

Towson

Clinton's defenders, Young's constituents

I was dumbfounded when the voters in former state Sen. Larry Young's district vehemently resisted his expulsion from the Maryland legislature for alleged illegal acts.

I owed their perceived stupidity to something lacking in the moral fiber of his constituents.

But now, President Clinton's supporters are acting in a similar fashion. They don't care that he had sex in the Oval Office area of the White House with a young government employee.

They don't care if he lied under oath to avoid prosecution in the Paula Jones sexual harassment lawsuit or under oath before the grand jury or when he wagged his finger at the American people and said "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky."

What they really care about is their politics. They are Democrats; they voted for this man; and they want him to continue in office, no matter what.

Evidently, politics transcends morality, whether it is local or national politics.

Murray Spear

Baltimore

Election can bring checks and balances

As a conservative Democrat for more than 50 years, I am amazed that columnists and readers have failed to note the unusual opportunity for the voters in the state election.

With the overwhelming Democratic majority in Maryland and the makeup of both houses of the legislature, there is no conceivable manner in which that could change in the near future.

Thus, any liberalization of gun laws, anti-abortion legislation and other ideas espoused by the far right would have absolutely no chance of consideration or passage by an overwhelming Democratic House of Delegates or state Senate, regardless of who is governor.

However, Maryland is in a unique position compared with other states because its governor controls the size and direction of the budget. The legislature can only diminish what is presented by the top executive.

Thus a fiscally responsible Republican governor with an overwhelmingly Democratic legislature is the ideal solution for Maryland. It would result in decreased unnecessary spending, lower taxes and, at the same time, not expose us to the more egregious programs the far right would thrust upon us.

Marion Friedman

Baltimore

Story portrayed toll of autism

Thank you for the article on the Welch quadruplets ("Seeking answers and miracles in autism times four," Sept. 27).

Few people who do not live with autism daily realize what a toll it takes on friendships, work performance, siblings and on the emotional and physical well-being of primary caregivers.

I have the utmost respect for Michele Dize for showing fortitude in the face of almost overwhelming circumstances and to The Sun for having the courage to raise awareness on a topic most people would rather not discuss.

Joyce Worsley

Baltimore

Enforcing traffic laws won't stop city violence

Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke's proposal to step up enforcement of traffic laws to reduce the unrelenting pace of homicides and other crimes may be misguided.

The proposal appears not to recognize the interpersonal nature of these crimes and the deep connection between murder and the drug culture.

Police officials say that about 80 percent of homicides occur between people who know each other.

From 1970 to 1980, homicides were marked by domestic disputes that turned violent.

Society, sensitized by the growing violence against women, reacted with public policy and programs such as the House of Ruth, which have been effective in reducing this kind of violence.

However, other violence, such as youth violence, has not gotten similar attention.

Homicide related to Baltimore's prolific drug culture now appears to explain a great percentage of the city's rate of homicide.

A number of circumstances seem to be related.

We have violence that occurs when someone retaliates after being sold "bad" drugs, violence related to power struggles between and inside drug organizations, homicides committed by stickup men and suppliers punishing their addicted dealers who consume more of the drug than they sell.

Street intelligence suggests that many of those homicides are characterized by young murder victims who are found in their cars or on the street.

Given these explanations for homicides, can an increase in traffic enforcement prevent these circumstances from occurring?

Certainly, the police will uncover illegalities during these traffic stops, but will these be enough to justify the strain on police relations with the public that is likely to occur when law-abiding citizens are stopped and questioned?

Two solutions come to mind that may stop this senseless carnage.

First, for interpersonal disputes that have the potential for violence, we should make available such activities as conflict mediation in our communities.

Second, for disputes that center around the drug culture, we simply need to do more to rid our communities of this scourge.

Our society seems to have lost the political will to deal with this problem at its source. It is nonsensical to think that this country, with all its influence and technology cannot track and stop the movement of drugs to this country.

Interrupting the supply of drugs for a sufficient period can break the cycle of addiction for many of the people who struggle with it. With no market and no drugs, people will continue to have disputes, but these disputes are unlikely to center around drugs.

Marcus Pollock

Baltimore

Special education system neglects duty to children

Your latest series about the failure of special education in Baltimore City portrays the system as suffering from benign neglect ("Lost Learning," Sept. 20-22).

Our experience was one of active neglect: Our son did not "fall through the cracks," he was pushed through those cracks with a battering ram.

In six years in the city school system, from age 3, he had two good years. In his first year, he had a bright, aggressive teacher whose style was perfectly suited to his learning style. That teacher was pushed out of the city system by a principal who actively took resources (rooms, books, aides and money) from ++ her special education classrooms.

After three years of achieving nothing in school, we discovered a learning system that really worked for our son.

Since the schools would neither implement it in the classroom nor help us fund it at home, we filed for due process and settled in mediation. Our son was placed in a less restrictive classroom with a trained aide, received an hour of additional tutoring every day after school and got caught up to grade level. He was on his way to becoming a normal child who could be out of the special education system with another year's intensive work.

All this work was undone the next year when he was placed in a classroom with a teacher and aide who not only did not understand what our son needed, but were unwilling and unable to learn any new techniques. Meetings quickly degenerated into shouting matches, and the principal and teacher refused to uphold the individual education plan as written.

Our son was placed back in a more restrictive classroom, at greater expense to the school system, and with additional supports withheld. He did less work, at a lower functional level, although he was a much more cooperative student because fewer demands were placed on him. I suppose the system considered this a success, though we did not.

Our experience in the city was dismal. We were confronted by bureaucrats whose main jobs seemed to be obfuscation and redirection. I cannot count the number of times court-mandated procedures were ignored. I was asked to request fewer hours of speech therapy for my child because the school didn't have enough personnel to cover the hours.

I was given a box of school supplies to make up for lost speech therapy hours.

Transportation was a nightmare; my son spent 90 minutes on a bus to go to a school five miles away. One parent told me her son was regularly kept waiting outside the school, on the bus, for 30 minutes or more because the driver got the children there too early.

A normal child wouldn't be able to learn with this sort of morning schedule. Why should the schools think a special-needs child can cope any better?

We responded to years of wasted time and money by moving out of the city. In Howard County, our son is flourishing in a regular classroom. He has a trained aide, receives a great deal of daily support and is once again doing meaningful work. We're hoping he will be back to grade level by the end of the year and will require fewer supports as he progresses to middle school.

I hope the new city schools chief executive officer can require competence from all of his employees in the offices at North Avenue and in the classrooms. I was and continue to be appalled by the ignorance and uncaring attitudes of teachers, principals, case managers and officials. Until the city system turns its attention outward, toward its students, it will continue to serve only itself.

Melinda Krummerich

Elkridge

Private college education has become too expensive

I am writing in reply to David L. Warren's letter ("Affording college tuition not an impossible dream," Sept. 26), which takes exception to an article by Denis Horgan about rising college costs.

I am a parent with firsthand experience in the matter of college costs. My daughter researched 12 upstanding universities and applied to them in the fall of 1997. She was accepted to all 12, including Harvard, Yale, Princeton and MIT. She chose to attend the University of Maryland on a full scholarship.

Mr. Warren writes about need-based aid. The need must be excruciatingly intense for any of these private colleges to dole out aid.

Middle-class parents had better forget about their children recieving aid from private institutions of prestige. Some cost between $30,000 to $34,000 a year.

A student who receives financial aid may start off with more grants and fewer loans. But as the years go by, the loans increase, and the grants decrease. The debt burden on many of these students is considerable. As for work-study programs, they are a small dent in the total cost. With most work-study, students earn only a few thousand dollars a year. Working more to earn more would be inimical to their pursuits of academics.

Mr. Horgan was neither unfocused nor inaccurate in his article.

Mr. Warren says that tuition increases are commensurate with inflation, and costs are actually decreasing.

Yet Cornell University has just increased its tuition by 4 percent, and the sticker price at Harvard is expected to increase, not decrease, over the years. The institutions that are reducing tuition are not doing this out of the bounty of their hearts. These institutions have hit the ceiling. There is no place for them to go but down. Some will close if they don't compete by cutting costs.

Students and parents should reject these institutions. Employers should ignore the prestige factor and evaluate applicants individually.

Usha Nellore

Bel Air

Yiddish continues to thrive in United States and world

I wanted to take issue with Ernest F. Imhoff's article ("Old language's lover won't let it languish," Sept. 16 ) about Yiddish.

It is about "a professor on a quest to save a dying language." I believe that I am proof to the contrary. Although I knew no more than a handful of words when I entered Yeshiva in ninth grade, I can now understand and even maintain a conversation in Yiddish. That is because I have had so many Yiddish-speaking friends and mentors that my absorbing the language was inevitable.

The professor may claim that Yiddish has "basically vanished except for certain Hasidic sects," but I have many Hasidic friends, and out of all the sects I know, only one major one does not teach Yiddish in its elementary schools.

Furthermore, the Yiddish-speaking population stretches far beyond the Hasidim. I once asked a non-Hasidic friend from Antwerp, Belgium, how he knew Yiddish so well, and he replied (( simply, "Because I'm Jewish!"

Indeed, Yiddish remains the mother tongue of religious Jews in Antwerp and parts of Switzerland and of natives of Jerusalem. The professor's assessment that "most of those speaking Yiddish are in their 70s and 80s" leads me to believe that she does not get around much. Is she unaware that in sections of Brooklyn such as Williamsburg and Crown Heights where Yiddish is so dominant in the schools and on the streets that English may be considered the second language for many children?

Has she never been to or heard of Borough Park, where almost every other block has a boys or girls school that is likely to be teaching students Judaic studies in Yiddish?

And considering that each major Hasidic day school contains more than 1,000 students, I find it difficult to believe that "there are only tens of thousands [of Yiddish speakers] in this country and Israel." Therefore, when my father and I read such statements as, "The hourglass on Yiddish is running low," and "We're hoping to revive interest and make this thing go. Yiddish is too important to let die," we were incredulous.

The fact is that Yiddish is alive and vibrant and continues to unite Jews around the world.

Etan T. Blass

Baltimore

Pub Date: 10/03/98